Adobe days : $b being the truthful narrative of the events in the life of a California girl on a sheep ranch and in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles while it was yet a small and humble town; together with an account of how three young men from Maine in eighteen hundred and fifty-three drove sheep and cattle across the plains, mountains and deserts from Illinois to the Pacific coast; and the strange prophecy of Admiral Thatcher about San Pedro harborBixby Smith, Sarah
History
Adobe days : $b being the truthful narrative of the events in the life of a California girl on a sheep ranch and in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles while it was yet a small and humble town; together with an account of how three young men from Maine in eighteen hundred and fifty-three drove sheep and cattle across the plains, mountains and deserts from Illinois to the Pacific coast; and the strange prophecy of Admiral Thatcher about San Pedro harbor
Bixby Smith, Sarah
Agriculture -- California; Bixby Smith, Sarah, 1871-1935 -- Childhood and youth; Ethnic groups -- California; Frontier and pioneer life -- California -- Los Angeles; Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Biography; Los Angeles (Calif.) -- History; Mines and mineral resources -- California; Real estate development
From the first of June until the middle of July they were on the
prairies; from then on they were in the Rocky Mountains until the first
of September, when they came down into the Valley of the Great Salt
Lake. By the first of October they were well under way again, following
the Fremont Trail to San Bernardino, a journey of three months. I have
given a brief report of their route; the diary is full of interesting
details of daily happenings, of the type of country through which they
passed, of the things that grew by the wayside and of the various
animals they encountered. Comments on the landscape give a hint of the
love of beauty in the writer, but, being a New Englander, he does not
indulge in much emotional or florid language.
I was interested in several mentions of the guidebook, Horne’s, which
evidently mapped out the routes with more or less detail. Sometimes
they found the statements accurate, sometimes not.
The sending of a letter home from time to time makes one realize that
the trail, though long and hard, was a traveled one, and that they were
not entirely isolated. Occasionally they were overtaken and passed by
those who could go more rapidly, unhampered by the slow-moving sheep.
Father often said that he walked across the continent; he had a saddle
horse, Nig, but, going at a sheep’s pace, he found it pleasanter on
foot.
When they first started out from Council Bluffs they met reports that
Indians ahead were troublesome, but they did not encounter any for
nearly a month. Then one day a couple of Omahas, carrying an English
rifle, were in camp for a time. Two nights later the man on guard,
James Force, was shot dead by an Indian who was attempting to capture
Dr. Flint’s horse. Father told me it was his watch, but this man had
taken it that fatal night, in return for some favor father had shown
him.
The last of July they had a second meeting with Indians, but
fortunately without casualties on either side. Dr. Flint says: “Soon
after halting, an half dozen Indians bounded out of the brush and
commenced to pillage the wagons. The teamsters, Johnson, Palmer, and
Jennings, were scared out of their wits and offered no resistance,
but Mrs. Johnson went after their hands with a hatchet when they went
to help themselves to things in her wagon.... Two more Indians joined
those already present,--one of them with a certificate that they were
Good Indians. It was written in faultless penmanship, expressing the
hope we would treat them well, so we gave them some hard tack and a
sheep that was lame.... The Indians were greatly astonished when they
found that we could use the Spanish language. We found that they were a
hunting and marauding party of Arapahoes from Texas.”
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